Cryptropolis
by Cryptropolis
Summary: During a routine psych exam, Nick Wilde discovers something about himself, which leads him on a quest to find a hidden city and the truth about his past.


Start with a blank page.

If you know how, make it a nice soft color. I like lavender. It's easier on the eyes, especially when you're writing very late at night, which you will be doing. Often.

The first things you write should be the facts. A time. A date. Names and places. The incident in brief. You are hardly a player in this story. Just say you were dispatched, or you saw something suspicious.

Then, you go into detail. Write in the first person. Describe exactly what happened. Don't leave out a single detail. Everything is important, especially if the case is open-ended. Your report should read like a narrative. Never cut corners here, and never use jargon. Say what you mean, in plain English. And please be honest. Even if you are not proud of how you handled yourself, it is important that we know the truth.

Occasionally, diagrams could be useful. If something is confusing, or simply works better in a diagram than in words, do not hesitate to add a picture.

If you have opinions or speculation you think is important, be sure to label it appropriately. This kind of confusion has stalled many cases in the past.

Start at the beginning. Write to the end. Don't leave anything out- you never know what could be important.

Incident Type: 10-00

Abstract: At 8:21 am, March 9th, 2017, Nick Wilde reported for a routine pre-employment psych exam. At 1:58 this morning, Officer Nick Wilde was shot in the abdomen and is now in critical condition.

Details:

 **CHAPTER ONE**

Everyone in Zootopia- hell, everyone in the world- knew who Nick Wilde was. That was indisputable. The Bellwether case put his name on every television, in every newspaper, throughout all households in all cities. Everyone knew he was going to be a cop, probably even before he did.

The day of his psych exam was beautiful. It was the first breath of spring we got. Mammals from all over Zootopia were flocking to the City Center, ready to enjoy the warm glow of the sun and the first bright smiles of waiters, shop owners, even perfect strangers. It really was a sweet and happy day.

I remember Nick so clearly. His voice, his mannerisms. It was the first time I had seen him looking so clean- his tie tight, his shirt ironed. A cop-to-be. An adorable little cadet. He grinned like the whole world was his. He walked with a confidence I had never seen. This was the real Nick.

"Are you ready?" I asked. My hand was hovering over the metal handle, warm with the touches of a thousand others.

His grin softened a bit, and he looked right into my eyes. "I was born ready, Carrots. Let's do this."

I threw my weight backwards and pulled open the door. Cops bustled past us, throwing down encouraging smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-ups when they spotted Nick. Today, he became a cop. There would be a ceremony, a badge pinned to his chest on stage, a whole big to-do… but this was really his moment. One last test. One more trial.

Clawhauser brightened as soon as he saw us. He had been waiting.

"Hey! It's the new kid!" He grinned. "Right on time, Mr. Wilde. I just need you to sign in."

That's one of the images burned into my memory. Nick, holding that pen, writing his name. It was so simple, such a little thing, such a brief moment, but I will never forget the way he smiled down at that clipboard. His signature was practiced and beautiful. He wrote the date with little dots between the numbers.

"Now, the testing room is in the basement," Clawhauser explained. "You're gonna go just behind that pillar and find the elevator…"

Nick watched with interest as Clawhauser explained how to find the testing room. There was a slow nod, a smile, a laugh, a new chapter.

I think we were both in a bit of a daze. It had been a little over a year since we met, even if we spent most of those days very far away from each other. This was a proud moment for the both of us.

The elevator slid down one short floor. The doors were a little shaky, but they opened into the musty hall nonetheless. The fluorescents hummed. Electricity shot through the air, bounced between us, mingled with dust and unpainted walls.

"Clawhauser said it was just-"

"Just down the hall." I smiled at Nick. "I know. I remember."

Nick cleared his throat. "Are you…" He rocked back and forth anxiously, like a child being dropped off by his mother for a first day of school. "Are you gonna wait here, or…"

"I will be right out here the whole time," I said. "U-unless you don't want me to!" Good save.

"N-no…" Nick cracked his knuckles on one hand. "I want you to. Wait, that is."

He tried to crack the knuckles on his other hand, but one wouldn't pop. He looked like he might snap his finger right off trying to make the tension release.

"Okay," I whispered. My hand twitched by my side, wanting to dart out and squeeze his.

Nick didn't move.

"Oh, come here!" I lunged at him, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist. His typical casual solidity had all but vanished, and he nearly toppled over. I could hear his heart pounding.

Nick hugged back as best he could, rubbing the fur on the back of my head. It tingled a bit.

"Thanks, Carrots." A little wink. A gentle grin.

Nick disappeared down the long hallway.

The psych test wasn't very hard, of course, even if it was extremely nerve-wracking. In all honesty, the hardest part was calibrating the stupid thing. They would ask you dumb, easy, obvious questions to discover your current resting heart rate. "What's your name?" It's Judy. Hopps. Is it Hopps? I suddenly can't remember. Should I give my middle name? It's technically my name, but I don't go by it, so does it count? Will it think I'm lying?

Nick would surely do fine. He was so calm and together, despite the source of his suave debonair being a traumatizing childhood event that no one ever thought to chat with him about. All he needed to do was stay calm through the beginning, and talk through the scenarios at the end. Easy-peasy. He'd pop out of that room a fully-formed cop in no time.

Except it took a long time. A very long time.

The wall was made of untreated cinderblock. I rolled my head back and forth against it as I sat on the cold, hard, somewhat sticky floor. My phone was dead. There was no clock on the wall. I would have counted ceiling tiles, but there didn't appear to be any down here. It just sort of opened to the air ducts and water pipes, like those pop-up outlet stores. The tiles on the floor made me dizzy. So I just stared at the wall and rolled my head around.

I really should have asked the receptionist, or knocked on the door or something. I never really found out exactly what took so long- Nick didn't ever want to talk about it- but I can't help feeling that some of this would have been avoided had I butted in.

After what felt like an eternity, the door creaked open an inch or two. I heard a muffled voice explain to Nick that everything was fine, he could still be a cop, they just needed to hold off for a bit. Get things checked. Maybe buy a new lie detector.

"This one's old as dirt anyways. I'd love to have an electronic one," said the officer. He side-stepped into the hallway a bit, and I spotted the curly tip of a ram's horn. "Honest to God, I've been waiting for this day. Stupid ancient piece of…" The ram shook his head. "Ah, well. We'll give you a ring when we got a new one. Shouldn't be long- maybe a week or two. See you around, kid."

I didn't hear Nick respond. He stepped out of the swing of the door, his back turned to me, and the ram quietly went back inside.

In his hands, he weakly grasped his hat. Just right in front of him, like someone in mourning.

"Nick?" I murmured. I wanted to say more, but the words wouldn't come.

He turned to face me very suddenly. His eyes were much older now. "Judy…"

The cold of the hall washed over me again, much harsher. He never called me that.

"Judy, something's wrong."

He looked nervously up at the ceiling. It bothered him that there were no tiles. I could tell.

"Could we go somewhere else? I feel…" He halted. "I feel… weird."

Suddenly, the hall was no longer comically cheap. The close walls, flickering lights, and muted colors felt much more like a prison cell. I needed out, too.

Nick's tie was pulled out from his neck.

There was something about that day that just felt wrong from the start, if I'm honest. Asking me to place it is like asking when animals became intelligent. How do you define it? Did it happen all at once? Did they even realize it?

Were they always intelligent?

There was a little tuft of orange fur poking off the back of his head, like he had been rubbing it.

One day, I asked Nick about his family. Would I ever get to meet them? He got confused. Said he didn't have any. Said he didn't know his parents. Then quickly added "anymore." Of course. That was a given. He was just flustered.

His sleeves were all rumpled and creased.

Nick was a liar. Nick was a con man. He knew all the tricks. Sometimes, there were so many lies, he got lost. But he was getting better. This was just latent.

He was scratching up the brim of his hat with nervous hands. He couldn't wear it. He wasn't a cop.

Back at the Grand Pangolin Arms, Nick sat on my crusty old mattress with a cup of hot tea in his hands. I pulled up the wooden chair from my desk, sat on it sidesaddle, leaned against the back with my shoulder. Nick put his face in the rising steam.

"Do you remember…" Nick whispered. "When I talked about my family?"

"I don't think you ever have."

A shadow crossed his face. "I know. I just realized that."

I was struggling to understand. "Are they okay? Are you okay?"

"I don't know…"

"Do you need more time to-"

"I don't know how they are."

"Oh…" I nodded in false comprehension. "I'm sorry. When did you lose touch?"

"No!" He didn't shout. It wasn't even forceful. It was just… hard. "I don't remember anything about them. When I think of my family, I can't think of names or faces or any memories at all! There's just…" he swallowed hard. "Hazy clouds where they should be. Three of them. My dad taught me to hustle, my mom got me into ranger scouts, and the third one…"

I chewed my lip while Nick took a quiet sip of his tea.

"I can't remember anything about the third one at all. It's just gone."

What do you do? What do you do when someone tells you this? Do you cry for them, tell them they're crazy, tell them that everything will be fine?

I didn't do anything, and I don't think it was a mistake. We sat in that tiny apartment without another word as it grew dark outside. Nick had four cups of tea. He drank all four while staring at a spot on the wall where the spackle showed through the paint, almost expressionless.

Nick didn't cry or anything. When night fell, he slid onto the floor and slept. I tucked him in with an extra blanket I had in the closet.

By morning, he was gone.

I didn't see Nick for a few months. He didn't answer his phone. He wasn't seen at the office at all. No one was sure what had happened to him.

During the first week, I tried to let it go. If he wouldn't talk to me, he wouldn't talk to anyone. He needed space.

After a month, I tried to find him. That was when I realized that I had no idea where he lived. Or Finnick. He was isolated as long as he ignored me.

Another month passed, and I really started the invasion of privacy. I searched police records, hung out in civies in back alleys hoping to spot that van… the worst part was that no one else even seemed surprised. Nick was a con man. He lied for a living. Maybe he was lying about wanting to be a cop.

It was a very strange time for me. I'm sure that sounds awfully selfish and insensitive, considering what Nick must have been going through, but…

Well, here was this mammal who had sauntered into my life one day, just minding his own business, doing what he had always done. He became the single most important mammal in the world to me in a matter of days.

I often think about how different my life would be now had that truck not pulled out of the alleyway quite as fast. Maybe the driver decided he needed another sip of coffee before pulling out. Maybe he got a text from his wife. Any tiny twist of fate could have meant that Nick wouldn't have stumbled into the path of the truck, that the driver wouldn't have cursed at him, that I wouldn't have noticed him slip into the Ice Cream shop. I never would have recognized the pawpsicle in Otterton's hand. I would have staked my reputation, my career, on solving the unsolvable case. I would be back in Bunnyburrow, my dreams crushed.

Bellwether would have taken over.

I shudder at the thought, but it comes to me so often now that-

Anyway.

Nick went under the radar for a few months. One day, towards the end of August, he sent me a brief text: "passed."

My mother took photos of him at graduation. We didn't talk about what had happened. A part of me wondered if he had gone to some sort of therapist in those months he was gone. Again, I'm not really sure what he did. It didn't seem like a question I should be asking at the time. In hindsight, though… I wish I had. Maybe I would know the right thing to say, and Nick could be safe.

It was the first morning after graduation. A Monday. A cold, grey, rainy day in early September, and it was Nick Wilde's first day on the job.

In my own mind, that day is The Day. I'm not sure why. I think I knew that it was the start of something. I think everyone knew.

Nick had something in his eye that day. I remember that very clearly. He kept rubbing it, pulling at his lower lid. It was probably a hair. He always got hair in his eyes, he said. He wore contacts and they looked like ugly little bugs curled up on the lense.

"Good morning, Carrots." Scratch scratch.

"Nick." He was in my office. I wasn't especially angry- I was happy to see him. He seemed cheerful enough.

"I'm sorry about-"

"It's fine."

"You didn't even-"

"I know what you were going to say." I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands. They were in the way no matter how I stood. "It's okay. Really. I don't expect you to talk about it."

"I want to."

I was a bit slow on the uptake, admittedly, but Nick still stood up before I could get a word out. He side-stepped out from behind the desk- a bunny-sized desk, which looked so tiny as he stood over it- and over to a corkboard in the back corner of the room. It was mostly covered by a large poster, which he flipped carelessly to the side to reveal what was underneath.

"I found this picture." He said it right to the board, not to me or even to himself. "It made me remember."

He stared a little longer, then gently motioned for me to come closer.

The picture was fairly old. It was probably older than I was. A faded polaroid someone had snapped in a haste, with two blurry shapes as the subject. The focus was all wrong; there was an awkward (but artsy) emphasis on a little action figure grasped in the tiny hand of a fox kit. It looked like a griffin.

"That's me," Nick said, tapping the shape holding the action figure with a claw. "And that's my little sister."

She was nothing but a fuzzy form. It was hard to even name the color of the blob towards the edge of the frame. So much distortion, so much odd light bouncing throughout the intimate scene. In all honesty, she could have been a blanket. Or a coat. Or the edge of a furry finger just barely creeping over the lens.

I sighed. "Nick, what are you doing in my office?"

Nick withdrew his arm from the board a few inches. The poster rolled down a bit. "I work here now, Carrots."

"I know that." But you didn't answer my question. Are you sure you should be here? Are you sure you should wear that uniform? Are you okay, Nick?

His arm dropped to his side. "I thought you'd be happy to see me." He rubbed at his eye with one knuckle.

"You disappeared."

"I know."

"For months, Nick. Months. You didn't answer my texts, you didn't return my phone calls… I couldn't even find Finnick."

"I'm sorry."

I wasn't so sure about that. But, then, of course I was. Of course Nick was sorry. He was trying to make it up to me, share something with me, and I ignored it. Why was I so petty?

"Yeah."

Nick straightened his tie. "You can leave, if you want."

Scratch scratch scratch at the eye. It was pink now.

"It's my office."

"I could leave."

Scratch scratch.

It was my office. The nameplate on the desk said so. Even without Nick moving himself in so expertly, though, it didn't seem right to send him away. He looked like a teenager at his first job interview; hopeful, and adorably disheveled. That stupid eye.

"Damn it, Nick." I shook my head. "How do you do that?"

Nick gave a little smile. "Do what?"

"Just…" I struggled to find the right words. "Just lie like that?"

"I'm not lying."

"You're lying to yourself. You're not okay," I said. "You shouldn't be okay."

The hair must have gone, for Nick's eyes grew wide and unblinking. Only the sound of the rattling radiator could be heard now.

"Let me make it okay," he murmured.

"By telling me?"

"Of course." A warm smile. "How else?"


End file.
